Providers of content, such as publishers of web pages or other content pages, native advertisers, or other providers of content pages, may want to know how much of the content they are providing is being consumed, e.g., by a typical content consumer, specific types of consumer, etc., and/or how effective the content has been in achieving a desired behavior, such as click through to further content, completing a purchase, etc. Tools exist to detect whether such desired behavior occurred in response to a display page or ad, but a publisher may desire to know which specific content assets drove such behavior.
Native advertising refers to displaying ads or other sponsored content in a manner that integrates such content with other, non-sponsored content in a manner that matches a native look and feel of the page or other display in which the native advertising content is included. For example, a newsfeed style of page or display may include native advertising content interspersed, e.g., in a prescribed way, among other content items presented in the newsfeed. Native advertising content may link to other, more in depth content, such as an article formatted and/or otherwise presented in a manner that is consistent with a style associated with a publisher content page in which the native ad was displayed.
Native advertising requires the distribution of content at scale into multiple publisher sites. In various embodiments, native advertising content may comprise “brand” content and can consist of a variety of editorial components including words, images, video, sound or any combination thereof. This content is used as advertising messaging.
Native advertising and other content pages may comprise multiple distinct content assets, such as images, paragraph-formatted text, bulleted lists, product comparison charts, user-posted comment sections, etc. An article (or other unit of native advertising or other content) may include multiple types of content assets. Content may include video, images, text, sub-headlines, captions, slide shows (collection of images), animated images such as GIFs, informational images (infographics), interactive elements, and embedded social content such as Twitter™ “tweets” or other social network posts.
Publishers, advertisers, and other may wish to know how much value each asset comprising a content page is contributing to an intended purpose of the page, such as to advertise a given product. So-called “heat maps” have been provided to indicate the portions of a page which users spent the most time viewing, however to date such heat maps have been of limited utility, typically merely confirming that more user time is spent viewing the top portion of a page, which may be displayed first, than portions that may require users to scroll down.